Maybe Blaine County Needs A New Name

"Though it didn’t get far in Washington, some 38 states eventually passed so-called “Blaine Amendments,” including Montana."

One of Montana’s 56 counties carries the name of a prominent politician who almost became President of the United States but never set foot in the state.

Blaine County sits in north central Montana and is home to the Fort Belknap Indian Reservation, where members of the Assiniboine and Gros Ventre tribes reside. The county seat is Chinook. The man for whom the county is named, Republican James G. Blaine, was a Pennsylvania native who later became a U.S. Congressman and Senator from the state of Maine, Speaker of the House, and U.S. Secretary of State from 1889 to 1892. He lost the presidency by a hair to Democrat Grover Cleveland in 1884.

At only 18 years of age, Blaine became a popular professor of both math and ancient languages at a military institute in Kentucky. Some of his students were older than he was. Then in his early 20s, he taught at a school for the blind in Philadelphia. An offer to buy and run a newspaper in his wife’s native state then lured him to Maine. Success in the newspaper business gave him the notoriety to run for public office in Maine, as well as the money to invest in coal mining. 

Though many Montanans supported silver subsidies from the federal government in the 1870s, ‘80s, and early ‘90s, Blaine did not. He considered himself a hard-money, gold-standard man.

Tariffs were a huge issue in his day and on that one, he changed his mind. He supported high taxes on foreign imports early in his political career, then later worked to bring tariffs down and expand international trade.

In the 1884 presidential contest, Democrats attacked Blaine with never-proven charges of corruption. “Blaine, Blaine, the Continental Liar from the State of Maine!” they cried at rallies across the country. Republicans responded with a chant, “Ma, Ma, Where’s My Pa?”—alluding to rumors that Cleveland had sired a child out of wedlock.

James G. Blaine didn’t carry Blaine County in that election because Montana was not yet a state when the Republican Party nominated him as their candidate in 1884, five years before statehood. Moreover, Blaine County didn’t exist until 1912 when it was carved from Chouteau County. Blaine himself never visited Montana.

A Scots-Irish Protestant, Blaine harbored anti-Catholic sentiments, which led him to propose that Congress prohibit any public funding for religious schools. Though it didn’t get far in Washington, some 38 states eventually passed so-called “Blaine Amendments,” including Montana.

In 2015, the legislature in Helena created a tax credit for parents who contribute to scholarships for children to go to religious schools. The activist, left-leaning Montana Supreme Court eventually nullified the law on grounds that it violated the separation of church and state provided for in the state constitution’s Blaine Amendment. That’s like saying that if a citizen puts some of his welfare or Social Security money into the collection plate at church on Sunday, the government has somehow “established” a religion.

Millions of veterans have utilized the G.I. Bill and no one ever told them they couldn’t go to colleges run by Baptists, Presbyterians, Catholics, or whatever. The resulting choice and competition has been good for everybody.

In its landmark 2020 ruling in Espinoza v Montana Department of Revenue, the U.S. Supreme Court thankfully trashed the state court’s interpretation. It ruled, according to an analysis by the Institute for Justice, that “the U.S. Constitution does not allow states to discriminate against religious parents or schools if policymakers choose to enact a private educational choice program to empower parents to choose the educational environment best suited to their own children.” Sorry, James G. Blaine, but your antiquated (if not bigoted) views do violence to parental choice in education.

So, it’s notable that citizens of Blaine County went along with the name when the county was formed. Perhaps they thought highly of the man for his service in Congress and as Secretary of State. He himself was long gone, having died in 1893.

Nonetheless, if the citizens of Blaine County ever consider changing the name, I humbly suggest they consider Ronald Reagan. He twice carried the county and the state by landslides and twice visited Montana as President. Reagan County, for all of us who embrace rugged individualism, free enterprise, small government, and educational freedom, has a very nice ring to it.

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Lawrence W. Reed writes a monthly column for the Frontier Institute in Helena, on whose board he serves. He is president emeritus of the Foundation for Economic Education and blogs at www.lawrencewreed.com.